Biographical sketch

He earned a Laurea in Political Science at the Università di Bologna (1989), and a Master of Science (1991) and a Ph.D. (1994) of economics at the London School of Economics. His academic career includes professorships at distinguished European universities such as Universitat Pompeu Fabra, University College London, and the IIES-Stockholm University. He has also held visiting positions at Bocconi University (“Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Visiting Professorship”), Tsinghua University (“Mr. and Mrs. Tien Oung Liu Distinguished Visiting Professorship”) and the Universities of Oslo, Bologna, Southampton, and CERGE-EI Prague. His most recent appointment was a chair at the University of Zurich.

Fabrizio Zilibotti is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, EEA, CEPR and CESifo. He is a co-director of the NBER Economic Fluctuations Group on Income Distribution and Macroeconomics. He was the President of the European Economic Association in 2016.

He was the Principal Investigator of an ERC Advanced Grant. He is a recipient of the Yrjö Jahnsson 2009 award (the European analogue of the John Bates Clark medal, assigned to the best economist in Europe under the age of 45) and of the Sun Yefang 2012 Award from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for his article “Growing Like China.” He is the receipient of the Ciliegia d’Oro (Golden Cherry) prize, awarded to distinguished personalities in cultural, industrial, sport or humanitarian fields from Emilia Romagna (previous winners include, among others, Enzo Ferrari and Luciano Pavarotti).

He is an Italian citizen hailing from the town of Vignola (Modena), birthplace of the great architect Jacopo Barozzi (1507-73) and of the historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750). He is married to Maria Saez Marti and the father of one daughter, Nora.